Talk Sweet to Me
by dangerprawn
Summary: This is a story about how clinical depression shapes the strange courtship of Dr. Gregory house towards Dr. James E. Wilson. It is told by an expert in the field, Dr. Wilson himself. It features guest appearances by the ducklings and Cuddy.
1. Chapter 1

**Glossary: **

Akathesia – inner restlessness that manifests itself with an inability to sit still or remain motionless; may range in intensity from a mild sense of disquiet to overwhelming anxiety, malaise, and severe dysphoria or indescribable sense of terror and doom; often related as a sense of inner tension or 'chemical' torture

Benzodiazepines – drug which can be used a sedative, hypnotic, anti-anxiety, anticonvulsant, muscle relaxant and amnesic; known to worsen depressive symptoms if not closely monitored, it tends to pickle your liver.

* * *

"Doctor Wilson, are you alright?" my assistant prompted gently.

My hands felt like they were trembling and my throat felt like it was closing up. They weren't and it wasn't. The chart I was holding was perfectly still and my breathing was schooled and even. Something about my expression must have been giving me away.

Where to begin? I could have tried to explain but the words wouldn't have come out. Something had started in me but, it was faint and without substance. I felt as though I was becoming unfastened. I had spent all day half listening to patients, half hunting and circling myself trying to figure out why I suddenly felt

this way again.

Of course, I knew, physiologically what was happening. My mental health was disintegrating because I was recovering from trauma at the same time as I was undergoing withdraw from antidepressants. But, that didn't make me feel any better. I only felt myself part of the tightness in my chest and the nagging emptiness in the pit of my stomach.

"I'm _fine_," I lied – emphatically. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She looked at me like I was a fool.

"What?" I threw up my hands and a defensive grin.

She just shook her head with a tight lipped smile and reached up to grab the chart away from me.

* * *

I left the hospital and drove back to my new apartment in such a daze that it felt as though I had teleported from one door to the other. House had left a note for me on the refrigerator. I studied it as though the answers I looked for were between the lines that I read: '_I'll be home late tonight. Don't wait up for me.'_ His doctor's scrawl made it seem like another prescription. The squarish, capital letters were printed as though he knew there was something wrong and thought he could make me feel better if he wrote them boldly enough.

They didn't do the trick. I only felt lost in my own home.

"_Anytime you feel the pain_, _hey Jude, refrain,_" I heard the door click shut and, far away, someone singing quietly. "_Don't carry the world upon your shoulder_," House? No. I decided I must have been dreaming. After all, 'Hey Jude' was an unusual and disturbingly sentimental choice of song, even for a version of House produced by my subconscious. "_Well you know that its a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder._" I was not dreaming. I felt the surface I was curled up on dip as he sat down just a little too close to me. I must have taken something to get to sleep and fallen asleep on the couch after having been unable to make it to my bed, "I said not to wait up for me."

He smelled like the hospital would without any patients: an odd mixture of autoclaved sharps, latex, ethyl alcohol and orange surgical scrub. He crinkled something in his hands. I didn't bother to open my eyes to see what it was. In fact, I closed them tighter. I complained incoherently and gestured at him to turn out the light. Benzodiazapines are one hell of a class of drugs. I was so relaxed that I felt like I was melting into the couch.

"Stay still," he ordered.

There was something wet at my elbow. I felt an unexpected prick. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the light. He was wearing exam gloves. I glanced down at my arm. He was holding a butterfly needle in it with one hand and a cotton ball in the other. Non-consensual blood letting, nice.

"House, what the _hell_?"

"Oh please, don't give me that look. It's not like we haven't both drugged one another before," he answered as though that reply would be sufficient to quell my drowsy rage before elaborating, "I figured I would do you the courtesy of running some tests before dosing you, since you just had surgery."

He was wearing his reading glasses. They somehow made him look more tired. He stared me down. I didn't move. Because I wasn't about to spill blood across my sofa _not_ because I was afraid of him, "If you think I'm sick a good place to start would be _asking_ if I feel alright."

"I," he rolled his eyes, slipped the needle out and pressed the cotton against my vein, "_know _you don't feel alright: there was that almost career ending stunt, then almost life ending stunt and now you're speaking more slowly, more softly, eating less, you aren't laughing as much. You don't care as much about your appearance – over the past week you've lost 20 minutes off of your morning preening. And in case you hadn't noticed, you're constantly holding your hands over your sternum like it aches. What is that? Akathisia?"

"Yes," If I didn't know that House is a pathologically possessive, evil genius who just happened a brilliant diagnostician I would have thought that he was in love with me, noticing things like that. I tried telling him the truth, hoping it would sound so ridiculous that he would back down, "I feel sense of imminent doom like everyone I know and love is going to die any minute and it is going to have been all my fault. I am completely irrational."

"You were still on antidepressants or something with that effect before the surgery, something that metabolizes in the liver and you stopped them cold turkey. Didn't you?" I didn't say anything because I had nothing to say. He tried to bully it out of me, "Did you _tell_ Cuddy that you were still being treated for depression before she approved you for surgery? What else were you taking?"

"Did I ever _tell_ you I was being treated for depression?" He studied the vial of my blood as though he could read it without any lab equipment, "I'm going to a psychiatrist. I don't need you to diagnose me."

"Most psychiatrists are mental patients themselves and psychiatry is a soft science in its infancy. What is your shrink giving you?"

His eyes flicked around the room while he wore an expression of mild disgust, probably at himself for not being able to figure out what to do in this situation. This was House worried. It made me feel bad, "Nothing."

"Are you an idiot? What did you take?"

I must have looked like an idiot, sitting there with my mouth agape and my eyebrows raised as I groped for something to say. He looked like he was angry with me. All I could come up with was, "This is none of your business. It wasn't a high dose."

"What did you take?" he sounded like he was trying to keep himself from shouting.

"A little more than a twelfth of a milligram of klonopin," I admitted, finally.

"Two and a half weeks," House's surprised face was not something I got to see often, too bad these conditions weren't right to enjoy it, "after undergoing LDLT?"

"Yes. Anyhow, 'glad to hear a drug addict is concerned about my drug use, but I have to go to bed," I announced as I got to my feet and shuffled towards my bedroom. It would have been a perfect exit had I not lost my balance and tripped over the unpacked box labeled 'kitchen.'


	2. Chapter 2

Last night, after I fell, House didn't help me up. He hobbled up to me and looked down disapprovingly while prodding me with his cane.

Oddly, instead of berating me he questioned me shortly until he was sure that I didn't have some sort of infection. The interview ended with a question asked just bitingly enough that it could be passed off as sarcasm.

"It isn't me, is it?"

Post-detox House says things with words that strung-out-junkie-House would have said by throwing a monstrous temper tantrum. It's refreshing. But, that doesn't mean it isn't weird. He is still epically self-centered.

I lifted my head up, which took a lot of effort because it was very heavy, so that I could look him in the eye when I told him, "Not everything is about you."

* * *

"It's okay, Doctor Wilson," a tiny hand laid itself on top of mine. "This book makes me sad, too. But, it is happy in the end."

"Where was I?"

Not somewhere it was appropriate to be daydreaming about House. I was in the oncology department's branch in the children's ward on my lunch break reading _The Giving Tree_ to a little girl because it seems to be physically impossible for me to say 'no' to dying kids.

She pointed to the page, "_'And the boy...'_"

"_And the boy stayed away for a long time. And when he came back the tree was so happy she could hardly speak. 'Come boy, come and play,' she whispered. 'I'm too old and sad to play. I want a boat that will take me far away from here. Can you give me a boat?' _" I paused, gazed around the room. There had to be something less depressing to read around here somewhere, "Don't you want to read _Frog and Toad are Friends_ instead?"

"No. Want to read this book. I like it 'cause I like you. And you are like the tree."

Yes, I would give myself away in bits and pieces until there was nothing left. I wasn't motivated by love rather so much as an overwhelming, irrational feeling of guilt and anxiety which drove me to love people. But, what do motives matter anyway?

For example, a self-deprecating smile crossed my lips. Its true meaning would probably fly over her head and all she would see was a smile, "Thanks."

"When you make me better I am going to go back to school and then I will grow old and learn to make other people better," she took the book from my hands. "Let me read the rest."

It crossed my mind that if she were lucky she wouldn't make it to the end of the second grade. But, a year is a long time for a first grader.

Something moved in my peripheral vision. I glanced quickly towards the door and registered suit pants, a low cut shirt, dark hair. Damn it, I was cornered by Cuddy. I'd been avoiding her ever since we had outbid her on the apartment. She waited for me to excuse myself and followed me as I left the room.

"I need a favor."

"Hello," I greeted her. I still think that killing people with kindness is the best way to deal with the world, even if my secondary agenda was to point out that she was being rude.

She gave me a look like she was too busy for greetings or my cheekiness, "Can you lead a seminar on terminal illness next semester?"

"If I recall correctly," there was a short pause while I thought. It was difficult to concentrate. I felt like there was a slowly growing hole under my sternum where it articulated with the 5th, 6th and 7th ribs, "next semester starts in two weeks? Let me think about it."

She shook her head in frustration, "It starts in two weeks. So, you don't have _time_ to think about it."

If she didn't have_ time_ to say, 'Hello, how are you?' weeks after approving me for life threatening surgery I didn't have time at that moment to tell her that I would be glad to teach a class. I would stop by her office before leaving to tell her I'd do it.

"I'll think about it," I paused at the door to House's office.

She muttered something along the lines of, 'I'll find someone else,' and kept walking.

I opened the door to diagnostics department. The House's team didn't even look up from what they were doing. They appeared to be bored instead of worried. I guess they didn't have a case.

"Take me to your leader," I commanded.

"House," Thirteen filled in another line on her crossword, "took the day off."

Why hadn't I known about that? "Where'd he go?"

"He said he was going to New York," Chase articulated slowly. He was concentrating on his doodle of a brigade T-cells with wings and halos battling an invasion of bacteria with goat horns.

"If I didn't know better," Taub twirled his pen in his fingers, "I would say that he was just visiting a dominatrix. But, Foreman says he's buying you a gift."

Foreman, who had been deep in thought, threw up his hands and gave Taub a dirty look. Then he explained apologetically, "I'm sworn to secrecy. You're not supposed to know."

"Uh-huh," was all I could manage. What was House planning?

Taub leaned towards me, "What sort of dirt do you have on him that he's going out of his way to make you happy?"

There was no dirt. "There is no dirt."

Chase and Thirteen exchanged significant glances. Taub caught this and responded by saying, "Oh, please, there's no way! Double or nothing."

"You're on," Thirteen was studying the magazine again and didn't look back up.

"I'll buy in on Taub's side," Foreman added.

Seriously? Were they betting on the status of our relationship? What a ludicrous notion. We were good friends but... "We're not dating. If that's what you're getting at."

"It's not," Chase caught my gaze with a mischievous look in his eyes and a serious expression on his face.

Either the team was weirder than usual or when House was around their bizarre behavior was eclipsed by his. I exited with a sighed, "Well, thanks. This has been enlightening."

* * *

I arrived home exhausted to the smell of slightly burnt chocolate, cooking spinach, chicken soup and skunk. House was cooking up a storm. Literally, it looked like a hurricane had swept through the kitchen.

"I thought last night was bad, but this... is..."

He was sitting at the island with what was more than a small pile of marijuana laid out in front of him in a Petri dish. He was rolling what appeared to be a massive joint.

"Perfect? Wonderful?_ Just what you needed?_"

"I am not smoking that with you." He feigned a look of shock and disappointment while licking the paper of the joint to seal it closed.

"Look," he held up his creation, "at this masterpiece. I should have been an engineer." I loosened my tie, took off my suit jacket and sat down next to him surveying the kitchen. There were a plate of brownies and a pot boiling on the stove. He followed my gaze, "Jewish penicillin..."

Only House would find a way to be antisemitic while trying to comfort someone, "What are you trying to pull?"

Direct, blunt and self-assured as usual, House explained, "The only thing that popping benzos will do for your depression is make you so relaxed that you don't care how you feel. You know, in the long run, it will make you worse. Smoking weed will accomplish the same thing as the klonipin without the danger of damaging your liver or becoming addicted. And there is much less of a risk of exacerbating the depressive symptoms." He paused to light the thing, took a deep drag and held it for a moment. Then he opened his mouth and inhaled through his nose so the milk white smoke circled back through his nostrils. "Besides, I went to the heart of darkness Washington Heights to buy this for you. I risked my life. You are obligated to smoke this with me."

That argument might have worked if I hadn't attended graduate school at Columbia. The university medical center is in Washington Heights. It certainly is not a nice neighborhood for a woman to walk through alone. Female medical students in their lab coats are cat called in Spanish as soon as they leave the hospital. But, other than the constant threat of sexual harassment it is not that dangerous during the day.

"You didn't risk your life."

"Maybe not. But, you need to quit being such a wienie. You aren't on call. I checked. Nobody is going to die if you smoke a joint," He handed me it to me. I must have been looking skeptical, "What kind oncologist are you, anyway? Aren't all of you people for medical marijuana?"

"We're too old to be doing this," I argued weakly, watching it smolder between my fingers.

Maybe it would help. I supposed it couldn't hurt to try. Besides, if I didn't House would probably harass me until I admitted to being addicted to benzodiazepines, which I wasn't. I took a drag.

"No," he countered as he slid me a glass of water. I started coughing, "We can choose to get high because we are adults. And you're holding the joint like a woman."

I was too busy choking up a lung to say anything clever in response. The stuff was so strong that it was making my mouth water. The world was spinning already. He took a handful of my shirt and limped across the room with me in tow to the couch where he sat down far too close to me, again. He looked at me expectantly.

I passed him the joint and my best 'This is ridiculous; I can't believe we're doing this' look.

"What I think is ridiculous," he took another drag and finished the sentence on an inhale, "is how much you cough." A horrible, mischievous look crossed his face on the next exhale, "You were breathing in too fast. I'll do it for you. Breathe as slowly as I do."

I squinted incredulously at him as he inverted the joint and took it ember first into his mouth. He beckoned me to come closer. I did. I breathed in, he breathed out. He leaned back. It occurred to me that he was smiling at me the way arrogant bastards do when they've won their first kiss. Either that or he was just as high as I was. Our lips hadn't touched. I held my breath and didn't cough this time.

And there it was, the almost the same feeling of melting into the couch, of inertia, of not really caring about my irrational, misplaced sadness. But it was without the delightful feeling of each of my muscles relaxing that the klonipin provided.

"Thanks," the words dropped from my mouth and without my really thinking about it continued, "I feel less crappy."

House shook his graying head. He was trying not to tell me how stupid he thinks I am, "You only feel crappy because of SSRI discontinuation syndrome and the fact that you are back at work far too soon after being discharged from the hospital. But," Oh, great House had figured it out and I was too high to move let alone lie to him. Conniving bastard, "what I want to know is why you were stopping the SSRI in the first place. I was wrong about you stopping suddenly. You were weaning off of it."

It took me a while to sequence my frustration into a coherent answer. House is much better than I am at keeping his wits about him when he's blitzed. He should be. After all, he spent years trashed, passing his addiction off as being an ass. Well, he's still an ass. He looked impatient as he gestured for me to get on to the point.

"You looked at my file. What is it with you? Same song different verse..."

He didn't push. Instead he licked his lips and held his chin in his hands and generally sat there looking like he was deep in thought. This was House hurt and about to bite back.

I cut in before he could, "Why else does anyone stop a medication that is working? I was stopping because I didn't think I needed them anymore. Why does it matter so much to you? Because my medication regiment is puzzling? Because you don't like that you didn't realize it sooner?"

Surprisingly he didn't push back. He didn't even tell me that I should get back on antidepressants as soon as possible. He usually bites back when I press those buttons, the 'stay out of my private life' and its compliment 'I may or may not retaliate by ignoring you' buttons. Instead, he abruptly dropped the topic and changed the subject, "I got some movies. Nothing you have to think too hard about. You want to watch _Muppets From Space_ or _Yellow Submarine _or _James and the Giant Peach_?"


	3. Chapter 3

Oh, stop. All doctors are crazy," House interrupted me which was good because I was so blazed that I had no idea how long I had been talking or what I was getting at, "You have to be a lunatic to graduate medical school. It's an insane thing to do."

"House," I took another drag. I had gotten used to the smoke. So, the coughing wasn't so bad anymore. "I don't know which of my feelings are caused by things that have actually happened and which of them I'm basically making up."

"That's because," the blue light of the television flickered in his eyes, "you're depressed and high."

"I always feel that way."

"You always feel stoned?" He looked impressed, "Sign me up."

"No. I never know what's what."

"I have the solution. I'll need morphine, a gag and an ice pick."

"You're an ass."

"You don't think you'd feel better if you were a vegetable? I'd take care of you: wheel you around the hospital, wipe up your drool, find a cute nurse to change your diapers."

"No and I hope you aren't expecting me to take that as a compliment."

"I'd only do it because it would mean that I wouldn't have to pay for sex anymore."

"You're sick."

"And you're not? A lobotomy would prove that it's all in your head."

Distantly I was aware that the point I was about to make was somehow important to my friendship with House. I wasn't sure why. The implications disturbed me. So, I pushed them to a far corner of my mind.

"Exactly. If its all in my head then I don't know if I love people because I love them or if I love them because they give me something to think about other than my own misery."

House made the sort of sick-of-hearing-it face he makes when his patients say something he thinks is stupid,"Does it matter?"

"It matters."

"It's both. You really love them and you're using them. Don't you remember anything from your psych rotation?" He sounded like he was quoting from a textbook, "Depression is a disturbance of the very highest parts of the primitive brain: the thalamus, hypothalamus and limbic system, where elemental affective determinants of personality are lodged. It's happy neurotransmitter central. So what if you self-medicate your chemical imbalance by seeking love connections that release those same neurotransmitters? The only thing wrong with being an dopamine-oxytocin-vasopressin addict is that you whine about it constantly."

"How is being a serial monogamist a ever good thing?" I asked as if House, of all people, would know that what I was really asking for a cure to this aspect of myself.

He disappointed me. All he said was, "Why do you care suddenly? Are the ghosts of your failed marriages catching up with you?" in a spiteful sort of way that told me not only that this conversation was over but that he too was, for some reason, overwhelmed.

* * *

The next day, that horrible event I had been anticipating actually happened. It is never as bad as I think it will be. Nobody ever dies. It is never my fault. It is always something very small that sets me off. Usually it is being informed of a change I'm not ready for, that I hadn't thought over for weeks and weeks, or being told that I am about to lose someone.

This time, Thirteen cornered me against the nurse's station. She smiled at me smugly, like she was about to show me an excellent poker hand. It occurred to me that she had really learned a lot from House. For God's sake don't say it, I thought. Don't say that thing that I've been avoiding! Please leave it in the dark. But she did.

"House is in love with you."

I don't know why this statement of fact struck me so heavily. It wasn't as if I didn't have a clue already. But, I hadn't planned for this to happen. To hear it was true, not just something that I was being paranoid about, was at that moment in time the most overwhelming thing I could have heard.

House and I weren't supposed to be in love with each other. He was supposed to be the one I ran to when I ruined things with the ones I love. If he was the one I was in love with who would there be to turn to when I eventually, inevitably fucked up? None of my relationships work out. I would end up drawing him close, getting off on the thrill of falling in love and making him whole, then pushing him away when the chemical part of the romance was over. I couldn't lose my best friend like that.

But, what was I supposed to do? Crush all hope? Break his heart preemptively? I didn't even know why now. Why did he suddenly want me now when there had been so many missed opportunities in the past? Was I his rebound from Cuddy? Was Cuddy ever really the one he wanted? Maybe she was mistaken.

Sound nonchalant and smile, I reminded myself.

"And you gathered this how? I know he didn't tell you that."

"No. But, he did say he was worried about you."

It is fuzzy logic. However, as far as I am concerned House admitting out loud that he gives a shit about another human being could either be one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse or that he really was in love with me. And since there weren't any horseman running around I assumed the latter.

Again, my hands felt like they were trembling and my throat felt like it was closing up. This time it wasn't but they certainly were. I held on to the counter to steady myself and hung my head a little so that the expression I must have been wearing wouldn't give me away. I concentrated on schooling my breathing so it would be even. I focused on smiling. Just keep smiling. But, I wasn't fooling anyone.

"This is bad."

"Don't be such a closet case," she frowned at me in disappointment, "You're perfect for each other."

I didn't know entirely what to do. I decided, as usual, that distance makes the truth clear. My first instinct was run, go hide in my office because it is safe there. Or better yet leave the hospital without taking my jacket and keep going until I don't feel trapped. She asked me where I was going. I'm not sure what she had been expecting. I was only aware that I was walking away, shaking my head and gesturing nondescriptly with the chart I was holding.

I needed to find different heart to break.


End file.
